Snowden and WikiLeaks Clash Over How to Disclose Secrets

They may both support the dissemination of government secrets, but Edward J. Snowden and WikiLeaks seem to disagree on how best to do it.

On Thursday, Mr. Snowden, the former government contractor who released a trove of National Security Agency documents and now lives in exile in Russia, credited WikiLeaks, a clearinghouse for similar disclosures, with furthering the cause of transparency but also criticized its unfiltered approach.

Democratizing information has never been more vital, and @Wikileaks has helped. But their hostility to even modest curation is a mistake.

His words prompted a swift and cutting reply from WikiLeaks, which had once come to his aid.

Mr. Snowden, it suggested, was trying to ingratiate himself with Hillary Clinton, the Democratic presidential nominee, just days after WikiLeaks had released embarrassing emails showing that Democratic Party officials had derided the campaign of her main rival in the primary, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont.

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Edward Snowden spoke to an audience at the Forbidden Research conference in Cambridge, Mass., last week.CreditKayana Szymczak for The New York Times

WikiLeaks is often criticized for releasing documents without editing or regard for the sensitive information they may contain.

Mr. Snowden, on the other hand, has said that he chose to work with journalists in 2013 to selectively release the N.S.A. documents in order to limit the harmful consequences of exposing what he called the abuses of government surveillance.

The exchange on Thursday was all the more striking in light of the past collaboration between Mr. Snowden and the group, which helped him as he sought to find a place to settle into exile.

In June 2013, a WikiLeaks activist accompanied him as he made his way from Hong Kong to Moscow, a week after WikiLeaks’ founder, Julian Assange, encouraged the government of Ecuador to accept Mr. Snowden’s asylum request.

“Mr. Snowden requested our expertise and assistance,” Mr. Assange said at the time. “We’ve been involved in very similar legal and diplomatic and geopolitical struggles to preserve the organization and its ability to publish.”